Every year fans from all over the world flock to Toronto to celebrate Fan Expo Canada. Held inside of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Fan Expo Canada is Canada’s largest (North America’s third largest) annual celebration of comics, sci-fi, fantasy, horror and video games. Fan Expo is renowned for its legions of cosplayers (passionate fans that attend the convention dressed in costumes based on their favorite cinematic and literary characters) as well as the event’s numerous celebrity appearances. Popoptiq.com sent me out to cover this year’s Fan Expo and I’ll be keeping a journal as I speak with organizers, vendors and the fans.
Decades ago, Fan Expo style genre conventions (cons) started springing up all across North America when like-minded fans began forming meet-ups to share their love of comics, movies, and television. In 2015, genre expos and conventions have expanded to include celebrity appearances as well as major entertainment and tech industry announcements. Even after taking into account all the free swag, rare shopping opportunities and celebrity meet and greets, spending time with other fans still stands out as Fan Expo’s signature experience.
Eileen W. from Toronto is a veteran of the past six Fan Expos. Eileen and I sat down over pizza and discussed her thoughts on Fan Expo Canada. Eileen believes what sets Fan Expo apart from most other conventions is the amount of diversity on display. “When I first started coming I was only into like science fiction, fantasy,” Eileen said. “And then once I got here I really got into the artists, into the anime more and gaming.”
Fan Expo’s amalgamation of science fiction, anime and gaming opened up an entirely different world of cosplaying opportunities. For this year’s Fan Expo, she decided to cosplay as a character named Flemeth from the video game series Dragon Age. It was Eileen’s daughter (also cosplaying as a Dragon Age character) that suggested Eileen cosplay as Dragon Age’s infamous shape-shifter. A huge smile beamed over Eileen’s face as she explained how much fun it is to share a unified cosplaying theme with her children.
Eileen is a regular attendee of conventions and expos outside of Toronto and an expert in the world of “cons”. I asked Eileen if she had any advice for people that have yet to attend a Fan Expo type event. Eileen told me that the “try it just for a day approach” is what hooked her. “Come for a day, see what it’s like,” she said. Eileen says that it didn’t take her long to realize that one day wouldn’t be enough time to soak it all up and now she attends each day of Fan Expo’s four-day run.
What makes Fan Expo special is that we go there wearing our love of genre entertainment on our sleeves, both figuratively and literally. You can work in an office with someone for years and never find out that they are such a huge Game of Thrones fan that they can name all three of Daenery’s dragons without a quick peek at Wikipedia — at Fan Expo, that same co-worker may walk around wearing all three of Daenery’s dragons.
Even at Fan Expo, not everyone moves about broadcasting their Game of Thrones affliction, and with so much going on, meeting other people with mutual interests can get overwhelming. Ryan Glitch of Sci-Fi Speed Dating believes he has just the answer. Toting the tagline, “Matches made in fandom,” Sci-Fi Speed Dating brings together male and female Fan Expo attendees for a session of numerous three-minute speed dates. In order to ensure that any match or mismatch remains confidential, participants are each assigned numbers and do not share their names. After each date, participants mark down whether or not they wish to connect with the person they had just met. At the end of the event, Glitch and his team make sure that the contact information of the people that wish to connect with each other gets exchanged.
The session that I attended was a full house with people still trying to sign up right up until the event kicked off. I sat down in a room lined with men and women unsure of what they had just signed on for. If the group had any notion that nerves may dampen the mood of session, that impression didn’t last very long. Glitch emcees his sessions with the booming voice of a drill sergeant but also the emotional tact of a relationship therapist and the comedic timing of a stand-up comedy veteran. Cosplaying as a Jedi warrior, Glitch Jedi mind-tricked everyone’s anxieties out of the room before the session began. By the time the event’s first round of three-minute dates started, everyone had laughed off their nervous energy and was excited to jump into their evening of speed dates.
While I can’t speak for the other participants, my Sci-Fi Speed dates never felt awkward and more times than not, I was disappointed by how quickly our three-minute conversations came to an end. While I didn’t have many mutual connections, I enjoyed my time sitting down face to face with a group of strangers and discussing topics ranging from League of Legends to Lilo and Stitch.
Day two kept me busy scoping out vendors, taking pictures with cosplayers, eating at indoor food trucks, and talking to attendees. There is so much to see and do at Fan Expo that no matter how much I check out, I still feel like I’m missing out on another experience. It’s been a couple of long days and right now I’m running off of adrenaline. As busy as Thursday and Friday got, the weekend (when the biggest celebrity guests make their appearances) is when Fan Expo’s energy goes from a 10/10 to off the charts.
Fan Expo Canada takes place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and runs from September 3-6.